Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated r(ꜣ)w n(y)w prt m hrw(w), is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years. In 1842, the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch, translated to English as 'Book of the Dead'.
The Ebers Papyrus, also known as Papyrus Ebers, is an Egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to c. 1550 BCE. Among the oldest and most important medical papyri of Ancient Egypt, it was purchased at Luxor in the winter of 1873–1874 by the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers. It is currently kept at the Leipzig University Library in Germany.
The Book of Abraham is a collection of writings from several Egyptian scrolls discovered in the early 19th century during an archeological expedition by Antonio Lebolo. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased the scrolls from a traveling mummy exhibition on July 3, 1835, to be translated into English by Joseph Smith. According to Smith, the book was "a translation of some ancient records... purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus". Smith said the papyri described Abraham's early life, his travels to Canaan and Egypt, and his vision of the cosmos and its creation.
The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language and onomastics. The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents, the manumission of slaves, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents.
The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical text, named after Edwin Smith who bought it in 1862, and the oldest known surgical treatise on trauma. From a cited quotation in another text, it may have been known to ancient surgeons as the "Secret Book of the Physician".
The medicine of the ancient Egyptians is some of the oldest documented. From the beginnings of the civilization in the late fourth millennium BC until the Persian invasion of 525 BC, Egyptian medical practice went largely unchanged and included simple non-invasive surgery, setting of bones, dentistry, and an extensive set of pharmacopoeia. Egyptian medical thought influenced later traditions, including the Greeks.
The Joseph Smith Papyri (JSP) are Egyptian funerary papyrus fragments from ancient Thebes dated between 300 and 100 BC which, along with four mummies, were once owned by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Smith purchased the mummies and papyrus documents from a traveling exhibitor in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835. Smith said that the papyrus contained the records of the ancient patriarchs Abraham and Joseph.
Papyrus 13, designated by siglum 𝔓13 or P13 in the Gregory-Aland numbering, is a fragmentary manuscript of the New Testament in Greek. It was copied on papyrus in the 3rd century at approximately 225-250 CE.
The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus is the oldest known medical text in Egyptian history, dated to c. 1825 BCE, during the Twelfth Dynasty. The Papyrus addresses gynecological health concerns, pregnancy, fertility, and various treatments.
Egyptian medical papyri are ancient Egyptian texts written on papyrus which permit a glimpse at medical procedures and practices in ancient Egypt. These papyri give details on disease, diagnosis, and remedies of disease, which include herbal remedies, surgery, and magical incantations. Many of these papyri have been lost due to grave robbery. The largest study of the medical papyri to date has been undertaken by Humboldt University of Berlin and was titled Medizin der alten Ägypter.
The Hearst Papyrus, also called the Hearst Medical Papyrus, is one of the medical papyri of ancient Egypt. It was named after Phoebe Hearst. The papyrus contains 18 pages of medical prescriptions written in hieratic Egyptian writing, concentrating on treatments for problems dealing with the urinary system, blood, hair, and bites. It is dated to the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. It is considered an important manuscript, but some doubts persist about its authenticity.
The Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus, is one of the extant medical papyri, from ancient Egypt. It is dedicated to magical incantations against headaches and remedies for anorectal ailments, and is dated around 1200 BC. Part of the papyri collection of Alfred Chester Beatty, it is sometimes referred to simply as the Chester Beatty Papyri, but should not be confused with the Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, alias Chester Beatty Papyri.
The Ramesseum medical papyri constitute a collection of ancient Egyptian medical documents dating back to the early 18th century BC, found in the temple of the Ramesseum. As with most ancient Egyptian medical papyri, these documents mainly dealt with ailments, diseases, the structure of the body, and proposed remedies used to heal these afflictions, namely ophthalmologic ailments, gynaecology, muscles, tendons, and diseases of children. It is the only well-known papyrus to describe these in great detail. Most of the text written in the known manuscripts of this collection are in parts III, IV, and V, and written in vertical columns.
Charles Edwin Wilbour was an American journalist and Egyptologist. Wilbour is noted as one of the discoverers of the Elephantine Papyri and the creator of the first English translation of Les Misérables.
The Brugsch Papyrus, also known as the Greater Berlin Papyrus or simply Berlin Papyrus, is an important ancient Egyptian medical papyrus. It was discovered by Giuseppe Passalacqua in Saqqara, Egypt. Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia acquired it in 1827 for the Berlin Museum, where it is still housed. The style of writing is that of the 19th Dynasty, and it is dated between 1350 and 1200 BC.
Insinger Papyrus is a papyrus find from ancient Egypt and contains one of the oldest extant writings about Egyptian wisdom teachings (Sebayt). The manuscript is dated to around the 1st century BC according to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden where the main part is kept. Other sources suggest it dates to the 1st century AD, and to the 3rd century BC. Fragments have also been found in other collections.
The Greenfield Papyrus is a papyrus that contains an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and is named after Mrs. Edith Mary Greenfield, who presented it to the Trustees of the British Museum in May 1910. Now in the collections of the British Museum, London, it is one of the longest papyri in existence with a length of 37 metres.
The Erman Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical papyrus. Fifteen columns of the papyrus are preserved, nine on the recto and six on the verso. The papyrus dates to around 1600 BC at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.
The Wilbour Papyrus, named after the New York journalist who acquired it, Charles Edwin Wilbour, is the largest known non-funerary papyrus from Ancient Egypt. It is an administrative document which contains a survey of cultivatable lands in the late Ramesside Period of the New Kingdom of Egypt. The papyrus is 10 meters long and divided into two sections, text A and text B. Text A contains an extensive account of lands both privately and collectively owned. Text B is much shorter and contains an account of exclusively royal lands. The Wilbour Papyrus is a rare case of a well preserved look into the economic administration of Ancient Egypt. Egyptologists have been able to use it to produce a more complete analysis of the function of the Ancient Egyptian state.
